Penance
by The Fighting Irishman
Summary: Two old rivals meet one final time. A One-Shot from the TrodaireVerse.


A/N: I own nothing. This is a story that takes place somewhere in between "The Fight Club" and "Cost of the Crown," a story you can find on BlackLadyCharon's page. Check it out!

_And on the pedestal these words appear:_

_My name is Ozymandias, King of kings:_

_Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!..._

The church was beginning to empty out now. The service had concluded several hours ago, but Hearthome Cathedral was always open to the public at all hours of the day. The monks in charge of its daily upkeep divided themselves into shifts, with some managing things in the morning, some in the afternoon, and some in the dead hours of the night. It was closing in on night, as the sun began to set across the horizon and tint the painted glass windows with a burning orange hue. It was the kind of scene that put one in reverential silence, even if the reason was unclear.

Though it was not uncommon to see many strangers from many strange lands come and go to pay patronage to the cathedral, there was a strange air surrounding the man to the back of the pews. He was still wearing a black porkpie hat, and an equally depressively colored suit. His skin was ghoulishly pale, and his hands looked frail and shaking with age or some unknown disease. Perhaps it was understandable that the parents kept their children from coming too close; he looked like the Grim Reaper in human form, after all, and there was no sense in scaring children into knowing the concept of death before they could truly understand it.

He had been there for an hour or so, now. He hadn't made it to the most recent service, though he would not have gone if he were asked. This sort of thing and ritual and place he scorned, as unnecessary and frivolous constructs of the human existence. There was a choir practicing off to the side past the altar, and a few scattered people in the pews with their heads bowed deep in prayer or introspection.

He was deep in self-loathing.

He happened to make eye contact with a child who was leaving with his family, and sneered at the child's innocent curiosity. The wide-eyed look of fear in the child's eye, followed by him hurrying up his pace to be with mommy and daddy again might've caused him a sense of pride years ago. Now he just felt miserable. Sitting in a place of worship towards things he did not care for, playing boogeyman to little children who probably never knew who he was, once upon a time. Truly there could be no worse fate than this.

"I will give you credit. This is the _last_ place anyone would be looking for you."

Arceus damn it all, evidently there was.

He scowled as his partner took a seat next to him on the pew. He was wearing depressively bland clothing, with a pair of reading glasses perched on the edge of his nose. He looked like a middle-level accountant, and his humble look was infuriating to the man in black. And he let it be known.

"Not enough to chase me to the brink of ruin, Arach?" He remarked bitterly. "Now you need to stop and see how far I've fallen?" The Dragon Grandmaster, as well as former G-Man, pushed his glasses a bit further up his nose before speaking.

"Come now, you know me better than that. After all, there was a time where you had about half of my investigative team in your back pocket before I started cleaning house." He said.

"You make me seem like an amateur." The man in black replied.

"You'd been doing it long enough that your arrogance stepped in for amateurism." Arach replied. "Though I will admit, those incriminating photos you planted and doctored in an effort to ruin my relationship with my then-fiancée and now wife was an intriguing twist in our cat and mouse game." He said with a hint of curtness. The man in black hung his shoulders.

"I'd never done anything like that before, Arach. Usually the people coming after me had enough skeletons in their closet that all I had to do was drag them out. You were the first one that I had to lie about. I…It broke my code." The man in black said.

"I wasn't aware that you had one." Arach said, a slightly amused glint in his eye. The man in black frowned.

"Haven't you heard of honor among thieves?" He asked. Arach nodded.

"Certainly, but I wouldn't consider myself a thief." The Dragonmaster said. The man in black shrugged.

"Semantics. You were trying to steal my fun, and I was trying to steal as much fun as I could for myself. We're both thieves, just the only difference is you had a boss. And rules." He said. Arach rested his chin on his hand.

"You have quite an interesting concept of morality, Giovanni." He said.

And the former leader of Team Rocket took off his hat to look his old rival in the eye for the first time.

"I left morality at the door many years ago, Arach." He said. "The price I paid for that power."

Arach studied Giovanni's worn features.

"It seems you've paid a bit more than that." He said. Giovanni scowled.

"So you've noticed I'm sick. What a wonderful detective you've turned out to be." He added a sneer. "What's next, are you going to tell me what color my socks are?"

"Charcoal grey." Arach said. Giovanni gaped at him. "You're matching them with the color of your shoes in an effort to make yourself look taller, because you're afraid that whatever it is that's eating away at you is making you stoop too much."

Giovanni didn't say anything, so Arach kept going.

"Your eyes are sunken. You're not getting enough sleep yet you won't turn to sleeping pills or alcohol because 1.) You still have your pride and 2.) you couldn't afford developing an addiction. You probably only have a couple of outfits that are inconspicuous, and you had to pawn the rest off at black markets so as not to attract attention, and you most likely exchanged cash."

Giovanni's silence told him everything he needed to hear.

"Well, congratulations, you've figured me out." Giovanni hissed. Arach shrugged.

"I spent a career as a profiler for the G-Men long before I took this role in the Dragon Clan, Giovanni." Arach chuckled. "I've learned to spot the thread in more than a few ways."

They listened to the choir practicing for a few moments in silence, and then Arach glanced at his watch.

"It's getting late." He said.

"So it is." came the terse reply.

"Are you hungry?" Arach asked Giovanni.

"What?" Giovanni asked.

"Are you hungry?" Arach repeated the question. "I can't imagine what little money you have left leaves you the budget to properly eat." He said. Giovanni seemed to consider his words for a moment, before finally speaking in a small voice.

"I'm famished." He admitted. The way he gritted his teeth showed how unpleasant such an admission felt rolling off his teeth. Arach stood up from the pew.

"Well then, care to join me?" He asked. "I know a place."

Giovanni stared at him with a mixture of incredulity and scorn. Arach rolled his eyes.

"Like you've got something better to do." He said.

The place they chose was slightly across the street from the church, a little dive bar that was dimly lit and full of smoky hazes trapped in the reflection of the lights above. It was the kind of place where "families" discussed business, or ran "legitimate" businesses on the side. The perfect place to hide.

Despite this, Giovanni kept his hat close over his eyes as they stepped inside. Following the man who had spent a long time trying to bring him down was almost more than his ego could take.

Still, even desperate men will put aside principle if they can fill their stomachs.

"Order whatever you like." Arach said as they sat at a booth in the back corner. "I will pay for it."

Giovanni took this opportunity to get the most expensive things he could find, even if he had never particularly liked filet mignon. Arach's eye twitched slightly, but he remained expressionless and didn't say anything. He had dug this hole himself.

Arach didn't eat immediately when their food finally arrived, instead choosing to watch the famished former leader of Team Rocket greedily eat the best food he'd had in years. He noticed what Arach was doing, and scowled.

"Stop that." He said.

"Stop what?" Came the innocent reply.

"You're pitying me. Like I'm an animal." Giovanni snapped.

"You're not exactly making things easier on yourself." Arach replied. Giovanni fell silent, quietly admitting to himself that this former pencil-pushing dweeb had grown quite a bit since the last time he'd laid eyes on him.

The first time Giovanni had been made aware that there was a new investigator into the task force assigned to criminal organizations like Team Rocket, he'd brushed it off, considering the boy still looked like he had spots for Arceus' sake. But then the boy got himself a promotion, and used it to clean out the department of anyone that even slightly smelled of corruption. Giovanni learned from that point to take the kid seriously. No matter what happened, no matter what trick Giovanni tried, that damned man in front of him was able to get past it.

Except now he was a man, no doubt with a wife and grown kids, who had parlayed his reaming of Giovanni's empire into a respectable life. And where did that leave Giovanni?

Perhaps crime didn't pay after all.

"Can I ask you something?" Giovanni asked.

"Go ahead." Arach said.

"Why are you doing this?" Giovanni asked. "The pleasantries, the taking me out to dinner, the hesitance to arrest my ass on first sight. Why do you feel the need to prolong the inevitable?"

"What do you think I'm prolonging?" Arach asked.

Giovanni realized that Arach had a point, so he hemmed and hawed before he gave his answer.

"You're lowering my guard, then you're going to arrest me for the crimes I committed. I know you must have a massive amount of info on me." Giovanni said. "In reality, this whole affair is kind of sadistic. Even I never stooped to this level."

Arach raised an eyebrow.

"I'm serious. Team Rocket did an awful lot, but…" he paused, searching for the right words. "We had a code. Anyone that was in our way got a chance to be bought off. We didn't just indiscriminately kill things. Kill people. And those that did were punished."

"I thought the arrest of those Rocketeers connected to the Marowak murder in Lavender Town seemed awfully easy. As if they'd been gift-wrapped by their superiors." Arach mused.

"They betrayed a code. Never put a gun or a threat to someone or something that wasn't in the game. Up until that point I could take pride in the fact that we'd never killed anything. Intimidated? Sure. But never stooped to that level." Giovanni grabbed his drink and greedily downed it. Ulcers be damned, this stuff tasted good.

"Are you trying to paint yourself as a noble man, Giovanni?" Arach asked, somewhat (and understandably) skeptically. Giovanni laughed, a hoarse noise made worse by whatever was ailing him.

"Arceus, no. I'm just saying that we never woulda bombed out a lake like those Plasma freaks, or tried committing genocide like Flare, or mess with the world's structure like Aqua or Magma. What good is being in the business of making money if you've fucked up the world in which it matters?" He said. He then looked strangely pained. "Did I inspire them?"

"What?" Arach asked.

"Did I inspire them to…do the things they did?" Giovanni asked. "Did they see Giovanni, and think to themselves: there's a man who could've gone further. That makes me want to go far beyond what he ever did. Do you…think that I started all of this madness? Is it all on my hands?"

For the longest time, Arach was silent. Then he shrugged.

"Megalomania has no need for inspiration, Giovanni. They were men who felt they were greater than everyone else, and that they needed to create an elaborate plan to showcase this superiority. You didn't inspire them. They inspired themselves, with their delusions of grandeur." He said. Giovanni laughed again.

"Are you accusing me of megalomania, Arach?" He asked. Arach's response, while relieving, still cut deeply into Giovanni's personal pride.

"No. Simply greedy. A level far below them." He waved the waitress over to get their check, and then gestured to the door. "I think we'd better continue this elsewhere, hmm?" He asked.

They walked outside for a while now. The sun had almost completed setting, so that the remaining light in the world was mostly centered in the streetlights. They sat down at a park bench, staring at the forest in front of them.

"I haven't talked to people in a while." Giovanni finally admitted. "You're the first man I've talked to in…I want to say years." He admitted. "Rather pathetic, isn't it?" He asked. Arach shrugged.

"Self-loathing will do that to a man." He said. He turned and looked at Giovanni. "Don't think that I am here simply out of the goodness of my heart. I spent a very long time trying to get you arrested for the crimes your organization committed, and very nearly lost my family because you thought it acceptable to create a false affair between myself and a witness in the prosecution of one of your key lieutenants. I spent a very long time hating the fact that we were able to connect everyone to Team Rocket except you, and then you slipped through our fingers. Believe me, if we had met ten years prior, I would have relished this opportunity to twist the knife by doing all that I have tonight before arresting you in front of the frothing newspapers." He paused. "But time has passed. I've grown old. And you are dying."

The finality of that last sentence hung over the two of them like the grim reaper. Arach took off his glasses, cleaned them on his sleeve, and spoke again.

"I heard that you might be here and came looking to offer you a chance. You don't have much time left, do you? A few years, maybe?"

"Why do you care?" Giovanni asked. Arach stood up, and began fishing in his coat pocket for something.

"I care because I don't like knowing that men can die without achieving some degree of closure. And no one, not even a man like yourself, deserves that." He pulled something out of his coat pocket, and handed it to Giovanni. "Make of this what you will, and do what you wish." He started to walk away. Giovanni stood up in shock, and shouted.

"Where are you going? Aren't you going to finish things?" He asked.

Arach turned around and shook his head.

"That's your job."

Giovanni blinked in rage, and then stared in shock. Arach had disappeared, like he had never even been there. He stared at where the Dragon Clan master once was, and at the neatly folded sheet of paper in his hand. Hand shaking slightly, he unfolded it.

It was an address.

**THE NEXT DAY**

All his life, Perry O'Malley had wanted to be a police officer. His granddad was a cop, his father was still a cop, and now he was on the force with his old man. He could barely contain his excitement when he heard he'd been assigned to the same beat his old man once patrolled, and had gotten a promise from dad that at lunch they'd live up to every stereotype imaginable and get coffee and donuts. A celebration of his first day.

He was standing at the corner, talking to a woman who had waved him over to her newspaper stand.

"You officer 'Malley's kid?" She asked, flashing a bright grin. He nodded.

"Uh, yes I was. Am. I am his kid. Runs in the blood, I guess?" He offered. The aged lady snorted.

"'Das good, 'das good. You gonna do a good job, I feel. I help your daddy wit' a lotta cases when he was your age, an' if'n you stick wit' me I help you too. Figure out th' neighborhood, y'see?" She asked. Perry nodded.

"I'm glad to have an 'informant,' if you will." He said. He was about to continue, when a man cleared his throat behind him. Officer O'Malley turned around.

"Officer?" The man asked. Perry nodded.

"Is there a problem, sir?" He asked. The man, dressed in a black coat and wearing a porkpie hat, extended his hands forward as if expecting handcuffs.

"Yes. I'm the problem. I'd like to turn myself in." He said. Perry cocked his head to the side.

"What have you done, sir?" He asked. The man looked up straighter so that their eyes met, and there was a glint of life in the man's eyes that seemed recent.

"Oh, son, I'm about to make your career." He said. Perry glanced back at the newswoman, whose stunned expression implied she knew who this man was. She frantically motioned for Perry to cuff him, and the young officer complied. He led the strange man away to his patrol car.

He'd receive every police award in existence later that week. He just didn't know it yet.

**THAT NIGHT**

"Honeyy!" He heard her voice call him from the front door. He glanced away from his desk, where he'd been doing work.

"What's up?" He asked. In walked his wife, her trademark curled hair let loose and flowing behind her back. (They were home alone, and she was tired) In her hand was an envelope.

"I just got this from the mail. Why didn't you get the mail earlier?" She asked, lightly teasing him. He looked at his desk, and at the blueprint he was sketching in front of him.

"Uh…forgot." He admitted. She giggled, and then walked over and leaned over his shoulder.

"Must be a big project if you forget to eat…or drink…or do something I asked you to." She poked his nose, giggling at his annoyed snort. That was his strange little quirk: he hated anyone touching him like that.

Except her.

"Hey, Silph. Co. is a big deal, Lyra." He said. "I give them a blueprint they like, and rest assured you and I will be living on a beach." He adjusted his reading glasses. "I just wish they'd given me a little less…restrictions." Lyra rolled her eyes with a smile.

"Eh, you're a big boy. You can handle it." She said. She waved the envelope obnoxiously in his face. "Aren't you gonna read it?" She asked.

He sighed, and took it from her if only to keep her from driving him up the wall. He glanced at the envelope. It was blank. Suspiciously, he gingerly felt it. No, it wasn't a prank. There was simply a letter in there. He broke the seal, and unfolded the sheets of paper inside.

He recognized the writing immediately. It was shaky, and there appeared to be dried spots of water littered throughout the piece, but he knew who had written this. It was clear as day. Instinctively, he put a hand to his mouth. Lyra sensed his discomfort.

"Sweetie? What's wrong?" His answer came after a choked silence.

"…This is my father's handwriting." He said.

They stared at the letter for the longest time. Neither was sure what to say. Finally, Lyra spoke.

"Are you going to read it, Silver?" She asked.

Silver ran a hand through his red hair, and stared at the letter a little bit longer.

Miles away from them, an old and frail man was led into a quiet cell. He politely thanked the guard, and then sat down on his bed. He stared at the window, which graciously let him have a view of the moon. It was full, and he stared at it for the longest time.

Sighing, he took a deep breath. Then, he clasped his hands.

And for the first time in his life, Giovanni began to pray.

Not for himself, no. That ship had long since sailed.

Rather, he prayed for his son. And that the anger that had consumed him throughout his entire life would not consume his boy, Silver.

He couldn't live with much, but if his son lived a happy life, then he could live with that.

_And the only thing to do with a sin is to confess, do penance and then…ask for forgiveness…_

_-Joseph J. Ellis_


End file.
